I’d love to see a tax code that rewarded investment and discouraged consumption. That would mean cutting taxes on earnings but raising revenue through a progressive consumption tax. I’d love to see a tax code that punished pollution but encouraged social cohesion. That would mean taxing carbon but increasing tax credits for working people and families with children.

It seems the be the enduring economic argument of our times. Are companies more important than people?

Our politicians know the answer. Corporations pay them lots. People don’t. When will we seek a government for the people not a government for profiteers?

In 2010, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which I direct, was authorized to study mandatory arbitration and write rules consistent with the study. After five years of work, we recently finalized a rule to stop companies from denying groups of consumers the option of going to court when they are treated unfairly.

Opponents have unleashed attacks to overturn the rule, and the House just passed legislation to that end. Before the Senate decides whether to protect companies or consumers, it’s worth correcting the record.

First, opponents claim that plaintiffs are better served by acting individually than by joining a group lawsuit. This claim is not supported by facts or common sense. Our study contained revealing data on the results of group lawsuits and individual actions. We found that group lawsuits get more money back to more people. In five years of group lawsuits, we tallied an average of $220 million paid to 6.8 million consumers per year. Yet in the arbitration cases we studied, on average, 16 people per year recovered less than $100,000 total.

Not only do group lawsuits help consumers recover money they otherwise would forfeit, but they also protect many more consumers by halting and deterring harmful behavior. For example, when banks reordered bank debits to charge more overdraft fees, consumers sued and recovered $1 billion. Most banks have since stopped the practice.

If we want to set smart goals for improving climate change outcomes we need to incentivize adoption of electric vehicles. There is no barrier to adoption in this article that couldn’t be overcome with smart incentives. No new tech needed. Winners: all of humanity! Losers: energy companies too slow to adapt.

The International Energy Agency has estimated that electric vehicles would have to account for at least 40 percent of passenger vehicle sales by 2040 for the world to have a chance of meeting the climate goals outlined in the Paris agreement, keeping total global warming below 2 degrees Celsius.

Drafting bills like the new healthcare bill in secret mean two things. Republicans know it’s wrong and they wish to obscure the involvement of special interests.

As they draft legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Senate Republican leaders are aiming to transform large sections of the American health care system without a single hearing on their bill and without a formal, open drafting session.
That has created an air of distrust and concern — on and off Capitol Hill, with Democrats but also with Republicans.

The United States system for taxing businesses is a mess.
The current corporate income tax manages the weird trick of both taxing companies at a higher statutory rate than other advanced countries while collecting less money, as a percentage of the overall economy, than most of them. It is infinitely complicated and it gives companies incentives to borrow too much money and move operations to countries with lower tax rates.

This article is really about wage theft, but no one likes to call it that.

The author commissioned a study to show how we could make up lost income gains by using earned income tax credits for the lowest paid workers.

This is a great idea which the staff generally applauds, but it misses the point of where the lost wages went. In seeking to fund this make-up pay the authors dance around the idea of making those responsible give it back.

economic growth has far outpaced income growth for decades. Gross domestic product for each person in the United States was 78 percent higher in 2015 than in 1979. But the average income for those households at the 20th percentile of the income distribution rose only 6.9 percent in that span.

No one wants to admit that corporations and the wealthy took the profit from productivity gains and GDP growth away from the workers. Now have to carefully beg for it back. This is not NobodyisFlyingthePlane. This is wage theft.